32 - Rutger Bregman on Why People Are Decent, Effective Altruism, and Causing Tucker Carlson’s Meltdown

Rutger Bregman is the bestselling author of Utopia for Realists and Humankind: a Hopeful History. He has been profiled in the New York Times and interviewed on the Daily Show. Rupert Murdoch has been spotted reading his book, and Tucker Carlson called him a “fucking moron.” 

I first came across Rutger years ago when a friend was reading Utopia for Realists. The book, which argues for UBI, open borders, and a 15 hour work week, intrigued me, but I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t read it. 

He popped back up on my radar when he appeared at Davos, the annual gathering of the super-wealthy, and lambasted his audience for not talking about taxes. The viral moment he created led to an invitation onto Tucker Carlson’s show, where Rutger’s challenge to the Fox News host led to what can only be described as a meltdown. In our interview, Rutger goes deeper into the full story of both events than I’ve seen anywhere else. 

We spend the bulk of the interview discussing his book Humankind, which argues that people are actually pretty decent, but power corrupts. This is one of my favorite books, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. 

We wrap up with a discussion of Rutger’s relationship with effective altruism, the philosophy and social movement trying to do as much as possible to improve the world. 

In particular, we discuss:

• His career and the publication of Utopia for Realists
• The unlikely success of the book
• His trip to Davos
• Making Tucker Carlson lose his mind
• Veneer theory and why Rousseau is underrated
• How people actually behave in disasters
• Why carpet bombing cities backfires
• Why distance kills
• The domestication of humans
• Why socializing makes us smart
• The problems with Milgram's shock experiments
• The replication crisis
• Criticisms of Rutger’s portrayal of hunter gatherer life
• His journey to effective altruism
• His ideas for solving EA’s billionaire problem
• His plans for an EA-adjacent book
• The broader changes to EA over the years
• Hijacking status for good  
• How committing your career to helping others might actually make you happiest

Links:

Discourse on Inequality

The Doomsday Machine

Violence

The Secret of Our Success

The Dawn of Everything

The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months

The Possibility of an Ongoing Moral Catastrophe

Giving What We Can

Grilled

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